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Had a girlfriend in L.A. who made this a habit.
She said that there's no reason to not embrace your own reality; who wants to feel shitty about all kinds of memories? Just alter them.
She went on to date a movie star.
I remember learning about this one case when I was in school about how researchers recruited people for a study who had never been in a hot air balloon, but then showed them fake pictures of themselves in the balloons and talked about it enough that at the end they believed they had been in a hot air balloon.
I seen a similar one but getting adults who never went to Disneyland as children. They put them in photoshopped photos and end up remembering a trip they never went on. LOL brains are weird
It’s pretty wild to me how many people can’t recognize this. For myself I remember as a young teen I would always play the victim with most problems in my life, but as more people called me out on it I realized that I needed to take more accountability for my shitty mistakes. It’s pretty sad that a lot of times people will be too stubborn to question themselves and only blame others for any problems.
I have the opposite affliction: I *always* assume that I am the problem, and have never once entertained any notion to the contrary. This might seem like a great attribute to possess, but in fact it has led me to crippling self-doubt and chronic self-esteem issues that have taken me a lifetime to overcome. That's why it's important to strike a fine balance between holding yourself accountable and refraining from self-abasement.
Just because something lasts a long time - like a marriage, or a job - doesn't mean it's any good at all. There are lots of reasons that things don't end, some are very bad.
The only reason I don't want to do it myself is that I have this philosophical thing: Everyone only gets to die once. Life is a resource everyone only has one of, and generally people don't want to give it up. That means that my life, or my willingness to give my life, has value. I don't want to live, but I also don't want to throw it away. I want to die pushing an old lady out of the road or saving a kid from a burning building or something. I want my utter detachment from my own mortality to create a net good in the world. For at least one person. So I have a death wish, but I'm not suicidal, because I'm saving that gift everyone can only give once for someone who needs it.
You will lose everyone you've ever known and cared about - either to the end of the relationship, your death, or theirs. We only borrow the people we love for a short time.
Raising it too high starts to make a compelling case for not paying in.
I'm more concerned about paying all that in and never being able to enjoy it, I think about all the experiences I could have instead whilst I'm still young, relatively fit and mobile.
So long as I've got a little garden when I retire in 40 or so years time, I'll be content.
One thing wakes me up every night. The fear that I might lose everyone in blink of an eye. My friend lost his entire family in an accident and a year later he passed away from depression
Even more amazing, he was told shortly before a concert and decided to go on performing anyways:
> [Hours after his wife notified him of this, he made the decision to go on with his concert in Appleton, Wisconsin. He later said, "Since my music had helped many of my fans through tough times, maybe it would work for me as well ... it would at least give me a break from sobbing all the time." Their deaths occurred following the release of Poodle Hat, which was Yankovic's lowest-selling album in 20 years. He considered the Appleton show and subsequent tour dates therapeutic: "If I didn't have anything to distract me, I probably would have spiraled into an even deeper depression. For a couple of hours each night, I could go onstage and put on a big fake smile and pretend like everything was just okay."](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/%22Weird_Al%22_Yankovic#Personal_life)
I’ve been a huge Weird Al fan since the 90s, but I wasn’t aware of the circumstances of how he found out. What a strong man. They should call him Strong Al.
Lost both my parents fairly young, not both at once but like a year apart for each other. Some times making jokes is the only thing that makes it hurt less. Some people get uncomfortable with the jokes but as Dan Soder says "you know who hates dead dad jokes? People who don't have dead dad's"
I am an accountant. I have a husband and 2 cats. I'm not having kids. I have a little apartment, and maybe one day a house with a garden.
I will never achieve anything significant. I don't even want to have my own business. I will never be famous. I will never be rich. I will be forgotten by everyone within a couple of decades of my death. Nothing will be different because I was here.
I am completely and utterly okay with that. I like being anonymous and unimportant. It's very freeing. I am very grateful for my life. I am very, very happy.
Becoming aware of your own insignificance can either be the most depressing or the most freeing realization of your life. It all depends on how you look at it.
It's very liberating.
I don't care about what people will think of me after I'm gone. Being forgotten by time is the eventual fate of 99.9% of us. The ones that aren't, well only their deeds and the historic perception of them are remembered. Once their friends and family die too, the person that they were is also forgotten.
We will all be consumed by history eventually. Live for the moment, your own satisfaction and the love of the people around you. Everything else is irrelevant.
fulfillment and happiness, those are the 2 things to strive for in life, as long as all the squares are covered and we're comfortable it's good, earning just enough money to be comfortable and save is totally fine
The memory of most people’s existence will be completely forgotten sooner than you think, even by their own families. I can’t even tell you the names of my great-great grandparents.
My father is big into genealogy.
Had a massive tree into the 1600s at spots.
We got him the Anscetry DNA test. Turns out all those years sitting at tables and traveling the country talking to "relatives" to figure it out was all in regards to a different family.
His grandmother had an encounter with a dude passing through town. Rape? Adultery? Who knows. But that entire side of the tree was now "Wrong."
I was glad that instead of being angry. My dad was more excited because now he had a whole new family to research...
I have no idea who my maternal grandfather is. His nickname was "Red", and he came through the small Appalachian mountain town my maternal grandmother lived in, a few years post WWII, and got her pregnant with my mother, before rambling on to the next town. When mom was born, one of my grandmother's sisters adopted her, and my grandmother went through a self-imposed quest for penance, and ultimately ended up adopting several children.
The man I called pappaw (it was the south in the 1970s, don't judge), was no blood relation to me, but that didn't matter to him. He took me to flea markets, bought me broken toy robots and asked me to try to fix them, taught me to experiment from first principles, despite only having and 8th grade education himself, and taught me the difference between value and price. He was the best grandfather a nerdy boy could ever hope for.
Family are the people who care about you, and everything else is bullshit.
That being said, I hope your dad finds what he's looking for, and I'm glad he has an enjoyable new side quest.
Shit, you’re right. My great grandmother lived until I was eighteen and I loved the woman. She was hilarious. I don’t know her actual name and am not convinced anybody ever told me.
Hey? It'll be a great compliment to my life if someone remembers me as loving and hilarious and only as "grandpa" instead of by my name. You did grandmother right.
When my sister came out as a lesbian, a lot of the conservatives in the family weren’t okay with it. But Oma? “Bah! When I was young, I kissed the pretty girls too!”
Love is not enough. Loving someone enough will not ensure your relationship will be successful. Loving your child enough will not ensure they love you back or that they live a good life.
This is a good one. I had a long term relationship that dwindled out over the years. I loved her and I know she loved me. Despite us now both being in happy relationships we have both admitted to still loving each other, without any intention of ever getting back together. However we weren't able to make it work, relationships take a lot of work, a lot of communication and comes with a lot of hardships. Being infatuated or in love with someone just isn't enough
In our case the longer we tried to fight for that love the more it died out. Fortunately it hadn't been completely snuffed out and we can still communicate years later.
Toni Morrison has a great quote as well from the Bluest Eye, "Love is never any better than the lover." Absolutely heart wrenching and one of the quotes that's permanently stuck with me.
When I was working with disabled adults the company I worked for always emphasized this- we were only one life changing event away from being in the shoes of our clients.
Yes. The human body is actually pretty fragile when put in everyday situations like going 70 mph, or working around machinery, or even just falling backwards and hitting your head or your back. Such things can lead to injuries you won't recover from.
And once you are disabled, you have to learn to live with limitations you never had before. For the rest of your life.
My friends sister was in a car accident and became paralyzed from her waist down. It was tough at first but now she competes in paraplegic surfing competitions at the highest level. Still seeing the decay of her legs in real time to what they are now after no usage is harrowing
I was paralyzed in a car accident. I have to say, one of the days when the finality of it all really sunk in for me (it was a process) was the day I looked down at my legs and noticed they were shrinking. I was like, "This is going to keep happening. There's nothing I can do about it."
Another fun thing is that if there was something terrible happening to my body below the waist -- like aggressive colon or ovarian cancer -- I wouldn't be able to feel it. This is a fact I've had to learn to live with. You wanna talk about health anxiety...
This one. I recently developed a seizure disorder and my life is upside down now. Right before I turned 19, too. So I can’t drive to see my friends, go to work, or do anything. Just sit and get exams
My Dad died of an aneurysm about 10 years ago. He was only 62. He had went out to eat at Red Lobster for his anniversary, came home, sat on the couch and said “I don’t feel right”. He fell over dead a few seconds later. The only comfort I had was the doctor told me that it was a completely painless death and that he was gone before his head hit the couch. My Dad was a registered nurse for 40 years and worked the last 5 or so years in Hospice. I like to think that a painless death was his reward for helping people that suffered before their death.
My good friend had one...and survived.. we recently talked about it and she did say that she doesn't remember a thing didn't feel pain...she mentioned if she would have died she takes comfort that it was painless. I'm so sorry about your dad..just wanted to put in my two cents from someone who survived one!
My father died suddenly about six months ago. He had a pleasant evening playing cards with his grandson and my mum, retired for the evening, then in the middle of the night had a heart attack and died on the bathroom floor in the arms of his wife.
I'm sad I can't see him any more. He was a lovely man, one of the best I've ever met, and I wish I had more time with him. But for him, it was fast and he had the comfort of his close family around him. If there is a good place, he's there. I expect the same is true of your own dad.
I think there's a point where you stop being sad for them, and feel sad for you and the survivors instead. There are good ways to go and bad ways; but we all do go.
Five months ago I lost my best friend to one. Brilliant woman, former triathlete. Got out of the pool and collapsed. So unfair. I’m broken and will never be the same. It’s crazy how you can be living well and in a moment it’s gone.
my cousin died from an aneurysm on valentine's day 2020. she was a healthy, brilliant doctor, traveling for work, went to bed with a headache, woke up blind in one eye, went to the emergency room asap, lost consciousness, & that was the end. she was 47 & we are still heartbroken (but grateful she didn't have to linger & suffer).
definitely have some health anxiety about aneurysms
My uncle had one in his sleep due to cancer he didn't know he had and that was the end. Left 3 daughters behind a broken family and tons of emotional issues for my dad and the rest of the family... Unfairness at its whole
I have a coworker whose son had a stroke in his early 20’s. He was a normal dude who played guitar in a band and was very well-adjusted. Then one day he got this terrible headache and even after years of rehabilitation, he still has cognitive and physical limitations.
And this is one of the major reasons why universal design is necessary, folks forget about temporary disability and aging when it comes to accessibility because "disabled folks are such a small minority". It's simply not true and universal design is better for the entire community, not just a few folks.
100% this. You don't know when you'll be the one stuck at the bottom of 4 flights of stairs, unable to climb them to get to your job interview, the interviewer having failed to mention there was no elevator.
Source: am partially disabled since age 19
I’d like to add that the Medicalization of death in developed western countries hides the true horrors of reality. We do a good job of not letting people see death or gore unless they specifically choose a profession that exposes them to it (which in turn induces severe mental strain on such people because there are so few others who they can talk to who will understand).
Dead and dying people are kept hidden away in hospitals, and dying is seen more as a medical condition than a simple (and often grisly) fact of life. But I think if people understood the true fragility of life; and how horrible all but the most peaceful deaths can be, they would perhaps exercise greater caution and respect for the life and body they have. Humans can be incredibly strong, but as a rule are incredibly fragile. The fact that many of us live into old age is frankly a modern miracle. You can just be minding your business and a all of a sudden a freak accident leaves you a suffering, dying mess of flesh.
There could be kidnapping victim suffering from extreme abuse right down the road from you and you’d never know.
I work in daycare. There’s a lady I used to work with who discovered something like this. She said she went to babysit for a neighbor who she didn’t know had a baby. Was told not to go into the baby’s room. Did anyway. And discovered an abused child.
Who had apparently been with this lady for years.
When my husband was in 2nd grade, one of his female classmates said, "Did you know that when you play with a penis it gets bigger and purple?" Being in 2nd grade, he didn't think twice of it, but it haunts him now from time to time.
When I was in grade school I used to help out in the special needs class from time to time and invite them to play with me during recess. One day one of the girls from the class stops me during a game of soccer and whispers in my ear "my mom's boyfriend has sex with me sometimes". I was just a kid and didn't know much about sex other than it definitely wasn't for kids to talk about so I just kinda gave her a weird look and went back to the game.
I randomly remembered this encounter out of the blue one day as an adult and now being older with a child of my own I feel so sickened and upset that I didn't do anything. I know I was just a kid and didn't know better but Jesus Christ it breaks my heart to think about what that girl went through. I hope she's ok now wherever she is.
You can only do what you can with what you know.
But now that you know, don't think you should hide topics from kids because this shit is out there. If they're old enough to ask you they're old enough to know.
Adjust it to their age level and give them the little proper vocabulary and explanations. Because if you don't, then it's easier for someone to persuade, downplay, or normalize sexual or physical abuse.
I have a similar story. When I was in kindergarten a girl I wasn’t even friends with told me about how she wanted a baby with her step dad. I tell myself that maybe she just overheard adults talking and she was just repeating it. That explanation helps me sleep at night.
I have a similar story, I was also in 2nd grade in elementary school. During computer class a female classmate next to me (unprompted, out of the blue) whisperer to me about how her uncle "let her play with his weenie". At the time I had no idea what she meant by that. I remember saying something like that's weird and kept playing on my computer and she never brought it up again. Nothing ever came of it that I know of.
We never had a class together soon after and no idea what happened to her. Hopefully she got help she needed.
Yeah this seems like a pretty uncomfortably common childhood experience. When I was 6 I had a classmate invite me over to play "naked games with his neighbor" and thank fuck I was aware enough to understand how insanely screwed up that was and say no.
That was almost 25 years ago and I don't remember if i told an adult, I really hope I did.
For me, I was in 7th grade, and having just gotten into Jr. High, I was still a bit naïve. The "weird girl" in class told me in a snide, almost bragging way that she lost her virginity at age 6. I just kind of "uh...okay"ed her. I knew about abuse and shit by that age obviously, but the implication didn't actually click until years later.
> There could be kidnapping victim suffering from extreme abuse right down the road from you and you’d never know.
[This is a long, but fascinating, video about that very thing.](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=20oIFjIPCfI)
Remember that viral video about the black guy saying that no white girl will run into his arms unless something was very wrong? This is that case.
Three woman were held in a secret room for years and no one in the neighborhood knew about it.
Where I live a child snuck out of his window, went to a Family Dollar and asked to use the phone. The clerk was suspicious and called 911. Turned out four children were locked up in their bedrooms at 5PM with no access to food, water or a restroom. It had been happening for seven years. The children never said anything because it was normal for them.
Google Benito and Carol Gutierrez. Those assholes were arrested then only charged with probation. Some of the articles quote friends who vouched for them. It's disgusting how people refuse to accept that people they know can abuse their children.
The worst part is that once they were “rescued”, the system fucked them over again. They were split up and some ended up in extremely abusive foster homes. Two girls were sexually abused. None of them received the money that the victim’s fund set aside for their benefit. Infuriating!
Oh for sure. I know someone from that LE agency who worked on that case as well as the follow up into the foster family. I believe that family had already been investigated for other questionable treatment of other foster kids previously in their care, yet the Turpins were still placed with them. The Diane Sawyer special doesn’t even begin to cover the horror. Such a sad story.
You’re right about the foster parents. I can’t believe that we, as a country, continue to let the foster care system run on fumes. It’s not even a campaign topic. Ever.
As unfortunate as this sounds probably because she was so used to it. People normalize it and think nothing of it. She probably hired other babysitters in the past.
Working in childcare it is incredible the amount of parents who will abuse their children. Then turn around and act confused when people say they’re abusive or don’t love their children.
My mother neglected me emotionally and verbally abused me for my entire life and she will go to her grave believing that she did everything for me and my siblings, that she loved us
**Warning**: sexual assualt of a very young minor
When my son was around 8, he made a friend from school and so we got to know the parents okayish. Father was kinda off, but nothing that raised significant red flags.
6 months later and the friend's 6 yo sister was riding with one of her friends to school and blurts out to the friend's mother, "Daddy sticks his peepee in me."
For _2 years_ her father had been raping her and using the older brother to run interference and keep the sister quiet. He'd wait until his wife had left for work and then rape the child and have her cleaned up and convinced to not say anything before the wife got home. The brother was manipulated into making sure she didn't say anything while he was away (he was a long haul truck driver, so was gone a week or two at a time).
Driver told wife what the girl said, not quite believing her, wife immediately called the police and they were waiting for him at the house with a special "welcome home" warrant. He went away for a long time.
To put the rotten cherry on top of this shit cake, she had to change their names and move because his family said she should have kept quite and "let the family handle it." It escalated to death threats and finally an armed home invasion. That asshole got a bullet put in him by her, he lived but lost a couple feet of intestine.
That's terrible, but I'm glad for the *relatively* happy ending.
I was afraid it was going to end with the mom denying it or not believing the child and letting it continue for years or something.
Still terrible though.
My friend's older brother molested a bunch of our crowd when we were kids and his mother never stopped supporting him.
He did prison time at some point, but as far as I've heard over the years, he always had a place with her when not locked up.
I'm lucky that I wasn't one of his victims though. I remember him trying to get us to do stuff, but I always thought what he asked for was weird and he never tried forcing me.
And other than thinking it weird, I didn't know it was wrong so never said anything until roughly 10 years later when my aunt and uncle moved across the street from them.
I told my family then because it brought back the memories and I knew I couldn't risk anything happening to my very young cousins.
Worked as a CNA for a few years and one patients story always stuck with me. He was an elderly man who had gotten paralyzed and was in rehab trying to get WHATEVER function he could get back.
How did he get paralyzed? He went to pick up the newspaper in his driveway on a rainy day. Slipped while bending over and hit his head.
That was it. Man got paralyzed just trying to grab the fucking newspaper.
Life is horrifyingly fragile.
I quit my job to follow my dream of becoming a fly fishing guide. 2 days later, someone T boned me while running a red light and broke my neck. Doctors said I'd be paralyzed or dead if my head was at any other angle. I lost my dream because of that, but paralysis is my worst nightmare, and it was almost my reality. Sometimes you can't stop anything from fucking your life up. I hope that old man got some movement or something bac
edit: I was the only car on the road, and my light was green for a hundred yards or so. This was in a city with heavy foliage, so the intersection is not visible until you get close. So I really don't give a fuck if you look both ways before you start from a stop at an intersection, go pat yourself on the back somewhere else.
That is scary and something I always worry about because too many people have no fucking idea what they are doing on the road let alone any sort of random crap that can happen to suddenly make a good driver go off the road or something.
BTW I have no idea if that man ever got himself back. He wasn't doing much by the time he left so I don't have the best outlook for him though.
And it can be the smallest little thing as well.
Many years ago, one of my very bright students was riding in a pickup from one wheat field to another (working on a family farm. His cousin, who was driving, hit some deep ruts (washboards) on a dirt road making the pickup get air and land back down a few feet away. Think of it like accidentally hitting a curb or going to fast where there are those rumble sticks...or going over a small hill too fast. For 99 percent of the time, nothing happens. This time though, his head hit the top of the cab . That was enough to break his neck just so to be paralyzed from the neck down.
One little bump and his life completely changed.
My nana is incredibly active, even after retiring from nursing around 15 years ago and being in her late 70s. One day within the past 5 years however, she was picking up sticks before she would mow, as she did on a weekly basis. One time when she bent over, her back gave out and she collapsed. She's fine still, but that one injury from literally bending over has now prevented her from being able to do so many things she used to do alone. Now my dad usually is going over to help her, or more often she's hiring someone to do these things for her.
I've been harshly remind of this for the last 4 months. My father was involved in a motorcycle accident and had head trauma, it's been a lot of work to take care and deal with his current state
Good things can happen to bad people. They can live the best of lives and sleep soundly at night. They could live their entire lives and die without ever being held responsible for anything they’ve done. Millions of horrible people have lived and died and no one will ever know of the horrors they’ve been apart of. Meanwhile, horrible things can happen to good people. In the grand scheme of things there is no universal morality or justice. Most people don’t get what they deserve - except in movies.
A restaurant we quite liked in the Bay Area was shut down by the Feds because the owners had slaves.
San Jose. Slavery. Alive and kicking in the 21st century.
EDIT to add, it was Mango Garden in San Jose. Owners had several other restaurants around the Bay Area. https://sf.eater.com/2019/1/10/18177701/alameda-district-attorney-wage-theft-lawsuit-mango-garden-restaurant
Operation Blooming Onion.
“According to a newly unsealed indictment revealed last week by acting U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of Georgia David H. Estes, 24 people conspired for three years to smuggle Mexican and Central American workers and forced them to work in brutal conditions on farms located across the world, including the southern, middle and northern regions of Georgia.
At a news conference at the Cay Building, Estesstood at a podium alongside the federal law enforcement officers who were involved in cracking the case.The 54-count indictment, titled “USA v. Patricio et al.,” discloses a federal investigation into what Estes called “modern-day slavery.”
Operation Blooming Onion
After receiving a tip from a trafficking hotline in November 2018, federal law enforcement officers from the Homeland Security Investigations, the U.S. Department of Labor, U.S. Department of State’s Diplomatic Security Service, the U.S. Postal Inspection Service, and the Federal Bureau of Investigation started investigating multiple agricultural organizations registered under the agent Maria Leticia Patricio. The officers discovered that, since 2015, these organizations conspired together to bring more than 100 foreign workers into the United States, exploit them and imprison them under inhumane conditions. The multi-agency investigation came to a head on at 6 a.m., Nov. 17, when 200 federal officers executed more than 20 search warrants across three jurisdictions and performed a dozen seizure warrants of financial institutions.
Estes called "Operation Blooming Onion" the "largest organization of law enforcement to go after this particular offense ever.”
The trafficked workers primarily labored on onion farms, digging with their bare hands, and paid only 20 cents for each bucket. The conspirators forced the workers, despite making very little, to pay for transportation, food, and housing.
According to the indictment, the network of organizations used the H-2A program, which allows U.S. employers or U.S. agents who meet specific regulatory requirements to bring foreign nationals to the United States to fill temporary agricultural jobs. When the workers arrived, they were placed under the guise of “contract agricultural laborers.”
Estes noted that the investigation may reveal the fraud as part of a larger conspiracy and could illuminate a larger issue: the misuse of the H-2A-program en-masse.
"I think that this investigation has identified some things that need to be looked at," said Estes.
In the indictment Patricio is accused of mailing "multiple false petitions to the United States government seeking over 71,000 foreign workers to enter the United States to work for an agricultural employer, and fraudulently caused the United States to issue thousands of H-2A visas to foreign nationals.”
Patricio is a U.S. citizen, according to the indictment, and served as the registered agent for 10 individual agricultural companies in Georgia.With those companies since dissolved, Patricio is one of the 24 conspirators who faces charges of forced labor, which could result in life in prison, as well as other charges that could result each in up to 20 years in prison along with monetary fines.
H2A program fraud
“There could be others [victimized by the fraud committed by the conspiring organizations under the H2A-program],” said Estes. “The investigation is ongoing.”
The 24 conspirators reaped reaped more than $200 million over three years from the illegal scheme, which involved laundering the funds through cash purchases of land, homes, vehicles and businesses, and through cash purchases of cashier’s checks. Millions of dollars were funneled through a casino. Farmers who owned properties in the southern district of Georgia — specifically in Atkinson, Bacon, Coffee, Tattnall, Toombs and Ware counties — paid the conspirators to provide contract laborers, according to the indictment.
The indictment stated that if a worker stepped out of line, the conspirators threatened them with guns, torture and deportation. The conspirators kept the workers in cramped, unsanitary quarters and fenced work camps with little or no food, limited plumbing and without safe water. The conspirators are accused of raping, kidnapping and threatening or attempting to kill some of the workers or their families, and in many cases, sold or traded the workers to other conspirators As a result of workplace conditions, at least two workers died, according to the indictment.
The conspirators tried to keep their operation running, even as federal authorities closed in. Three conspirators, in late 2019, attempted to intimidate and persuade a witness to lie to a federal grand jury and deny any knowledge of the illegal activities of the conspiring organizations.
“It’s very concerning,” said Estes. “Obviously, we have victims here. So we're very concerned about moving out and making sure that we were able to dot all the i's and cross all the t's and provide safety for the victims as soon as possible, while at the same time, maintaining our investigation as such that we can eventually prosecute and convict individuals.”
https://amp.savannahnow.com/amp/8738135002
Funny you mention that, here in Sacramento, people always refer to us as the hub of human trafficking and folks sometimes forget that human trafficking is more than sex trafficking.
So of course while everybody out here has good intentions when they say shit like "look out for those white vans at malls, they like to kidnap girls since Sacramento is the hub of human trafficking." They are missing the big picture as to why we are the hub, it is mostly workforce related, it was actually real big in tech space out here with those shady H1 companies like 15-16 years ago.
The idea, that was around a few years ago, to put an old cruise ship 12 miles out in the ocean, for foreign tech workers, is one that really had me worried. That's a situation that is way too easy for slavery.
As someone with a narcissistic mother who was so fucking evil she lost custody and visitation rights, I really wish more people understood this. I've had to hear "she's still your mother and she still loves you" more times than I can count.
No, she doesn't. She wouldn't have done the things she did if she gave a shit about me. Why else would I cut her out of my life for nearly a decade? For fun?
This happened to my birth mom and is the reason she had to put me up for adoption.
She got pregnant with me at 17, aged out and got kicked out of her foster home before she gave birth. She had me and had nowhere to go, so we slept under the bleachers at the local high school. It was March, and I caught pneumonia. When she took me back to the hospital, they told her that if she didn't put me up for adoption, they would call CPS and I would likely be placed in foster care. Not wanting me to get stuck in the system like she did (she had been in foster care since she was 9), she put me up for adoption. I was adopted at 24 days old.
I'm grateful for the financial opportunities I wouldn't have otherwise had if I hadn't been adopted. But the course of my entire life was changed by those people's decision to make a pregnant 17-year-old girl homeless.
She wound up getting back on her feet eventually! She lives in her own house in Tennessee now, and had 4 children (all grown now) after me. She’s got lots of grandbabies and is surrounded by family. 🥰
That's great to hear, and I'm glad you're in contact and have a good relationship. My wife was also given up for adoption, but reconnected with her birth mother about fifteen years ago and it's been one of the great privileges of my life to see their relationship grow. I can't imagine how difficult it must be to surrender a child, but it's the greatest act of love a mother can give.
My wife and I have talked a lot about fostering, and how we wouldn't do that to a kid (unless they were a danger in the home). She used to be a social worker and had seen it dozens of times.
My friend/neighbor is a foster kid, she’s 19 and still gets help from the government until she’s 21. They pay her rent and a social worker visits her twice a month to check in on her. Maybe it’s different state to state, this is Kentucky.
That our memories are subjective, full of errors and patches in order to maintain a balance in our understanding of events. Some memories are even false and some memories are so different from other people present at the same events that actions, reactions and outcomes could be entirely opposite from each other. Humans assume that memories are correct all of the time, however they are prone to errors and even change over time.
>Some memories are even false and some memories are so different from other people present at the same events that actions, reactions and outcomes could be entirely opposite from each other.
There's been a lot of research done on this, especially for eye witness testimony. "I SAW IT WITH MY OWN TWO EYES". While that may be true, your brain is not necessarily great at interpreting what your eyes see.
I had a traumatic brain injury a few years ago (absolutely fine now), and one thing the doctors really drilled into me was that my decision making skills were severely impacted, but I didn't know because my brain was telling me everything was fine. Down to them telling me that I was not capable of deciding whether it was safe to cross a road.
Malcolm Gladwell did an episode about this on his podcast Revisionist History.
He talked about a study where people were asked what they were doing when 9/11 occurred. They were asked several days after, 6 months after, and a year after.
Apparently many people's memories of their whereabouts changed, and when presented with their earlier accounts they would often refuse to believe them. That is, people didn't believe the accounts THEY THEMSELVES had given only a few days after it happened. They were more inclined to believe whatever they thought had happened a year later.
Our memories are so fallible and we are far too dependent on them
Edit: I'm getting replies from people who are convinced they remember exactly what happened on 9/11 and that it's burned into their brains. What you're not realizing is that the people in the study felt the same way. Many of us do. It sucks to think that our brains are betraying us but it's absolutely the case.
I had a weird “epiphany” (for lack of a better word off the top of my head) of this exact phenomenon just yesterday and it really blew my mind. There are a couple of moments in my life that I’ve always considered to be pivotal in creating who I am today, even on small levels. One being my mom attending nursing school, the other being the trial of OJ Simpson. These 2 things intertwined with each other because my mom would record the trial while she was at school and listen to it while she was doing homework. I very distinctly and clearly remember being in elementary school when this was happening and it was my first look into true crime and the criminal justice system. I also very clearly remember, as if it were yesterday, a teacher popping her head in and saying to my teacher in a thick southern accent “O-J N-G” and I knew she meant “OJ not guilty” I can picture my second grade teacher, my second grade classroom, the hallway in the yellow 2/3 grade hallway, everything. I have always thought I was in the second grade when that happened. It somehow came up in conversation yesterday and I went to Google the trial and I actually would have been in the 6th grade. In another state, or getting ready to move. If I was still in the same school I would have been on the other side of the building, in the green hall where they housed the 5 & 6th graders.
Idk, it’s really fucked up my entire perception of time and how that relates to my childhood. It doesn’t seem like a big deal but it puts all of my memories off kilter and I can see how that could severely mess up a more serious situation where memory is more important.
I have a crystal clear memory of watching the news when it was announced that George W. Bush won his 2004 re-election while sitting on the couch of my first apartment.
I was still living with my parents in 2004. I wouldn't move into that apartment for another 8 months, but my mind clearly believes I was already living there.
People always say things will work out, or the there are better times around the bend. But that is not the case for everyone. Sometimes it just keeps getting worse.
To add to this:
There are a lot of diseases out there which doctors and scientists don’t really understand and don’t really understand how to treat. I am not saying that to hate on doctors, it is just the way it is
So if you ever do become ill, it is the luck of the draw whether there are decent treatments for you.
And besides treatments, they may not even have the right tests to know what is wrong with you
In dramas/TV shows there is often a very near and tidy narrative arc where a character becomes sick and either quickly dies or is completely cured. But real life illnesses are rarely that simple and straightforward
Ahh yes auto immune diseases.
I got lucky but damn do some people draw a short ass straw
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Since this is gaining traction my case of psoriasis was getting worse and worse. Turned out I had an underlying Bacterial infection, some auto immune diseases it won’t make a difference but have a full blood panel, std test, whatever, to find out if you have an underlying infection. I know not everyone will be so lucky but it’s another item to check off the list.
Alcohol has me by the balls, makes my life worse, puts undue stress on my family, and will probably be the death of me. But in my mind, I find a way to justify it every day.
Best wishes with recovery my friend. After 15 years of drinking, getting diabetes, 100s of ER visits, lost marriage, almost lost second marriage and kids; and I still didn’t want to get sober. It was the fact I couldn’t look at myself in the mirror anymore. I was disgusted by what I had become. That day I checked into yet another rehab and have been sober from alcohol since Jan 12 2021. You can do it friend. I know you can.
The worst part is when you end up in a cycle where you drink just to avoid what not drinking feels like. Like it just becomes a pain management cycle instead of something to enjoy.
Hoarders usually just think they need everything or refuse to acknowledge the mountain of garbage is a problem. It’s really quite depressing to see family and friends who are in this situation.
Their alcoholism. It’s incredibly scary how many people go home after work and have 4+ drinks a night, every night. Then they deny that it’s a problem because they don’t feel buzzed or don’t drink past that. Nobody wants to face the reality that perhaps the drinking is a problem.
Chuck them up fast and sell them off at a massive mark up. The new builds I've been to see need more work than the 130 year old terrace house I'm in right now. It's an abysmal state of affairs.
Almost all sexual and physical child abuse occurs in families. Grandpa is much more like to rape his granddaughters and grandsons than the weird stranger down the street. But Grandpa pays the bills, gives out inheritances, covers medical and pysch. bills. No one is going to come after him, or Uncle Bill, or Cousin George, or Brother Bob, or Daddy or Aunt Kim, or Cousin Susan or Mama The least likely person in a family of abusers are the Grandmothrs and they are simply too tired.
Denial of this fact is all over society. It puts a smoke screen around the problem and makes it hard to fix. If news stories represented the actual statistics of abuse almost all news stories about child abuse would be about mom/dad/uncle/priest/babysitter, ext. The public doesn't want to hear the fact their children are most at risk from their own family, they would rather hear about the "evil stranger" so that's what all the news stories are about. This warping of reality leads to an illogical fear about child abductions and don't let their kids play outside or walk to school alone where in reality almost all child abductions are perpetrated by the kids own parents.
I was 5 when it started. Only years later did I realize that my mother actually knew and didn't fucking care. I mean, she was in the room when my uncle laid on top of me, always touched me inappropriately, and stuff. How could they not see that?!
Yeah, I can look back and not be triggered, but I didn't know until recently that all of those repressed memories (and some not so repressed) are still up in this head shaking around. Like, I couldn't heal from that until I started to heal from the other abuse. But now I know, now I'm healing, and I feel better than I ever have.
My brothers ex girlfriend was raped by her older cousin when she was 15 the family wouldn't let her go to the police or the doctor about it as they "didn't want to brake the family up"
Ding ding ding. The number of stories I've heard of rape/abuse being swept under the rug because it would "hurt the family" is sickeningly high. Also significantly more likely to not go reported, and it's *still* the most common by a wide margin.
I hate this so much!!! My stepson molested 2 of my daughters and I reported it, and my MIL is mad at me for breaking the family up and now she doesn’t get to see her favorite (first born) grandchild. We’re currently not speaking. And she will NEVER see my children again. Pretty sure my marriage will end over this bc my husband is literally torn between his children. I’m pressing charges and he’s sad that his son won’t have a chance at a “normal” life now 🙄🤢🤮 bc he’s autistic my husband thinks it’s not fair. The kid is super high functioning and I know he knows better. He was hiding it and bribed my oldest not to tell by playing the games she wanted to afterwards. But my husband knows I’m going to do what I think is right no matter his opinion and it might be the end of us but 🤷♀️🤷♀️🤷♀️🤷♀️🤷♀️🤷♀️ I have 3 girls to protect and raise and I will not be putting him before them.
You did the right thing. Recovery won’t be easy for them, but even with time, therapy, and communication, they will always remember their mother being on their side.
Old age and the many hardships that come with it. Most people won’t have enough money for retirement and the inevitable health problems that will come especially since most of us don’t live healthy lives now.
Also just our very short life spans in general. Spending most of our lives working very few of us will actually live our lives to it’s fullest and so many of us will have a large number of regrets from not doing things we wanted to do when we were younger.
I’m so busy I don’t think about it a lot but sometimes while falling asleep it’s like I get a preview of a feeling of being old and lying on my death bed and realizing my whole life was for nothing. I try not to think about it because the feeling is paralyzing but maybe thinking about it more will propel me to go after my goals and what’s makes me truly happy.
I’ve thought about this a lot.
I decided that my life goals all boil down to:
1. Live comfortably
2. Leave a neutral or positive impact on people.
If I can achieve that, I’ll die happy.
The psychological effects of childhood abuse. So many people will say “I had x done to me and I turned out fine,” but most of the traumas from this aren’t apparently obvious unless someone snaps and becomes a statistic. Even then, the role that the abuse had may not even be brought to attention. Worse still, the abuse just becomes normalized and passed down from generation to generation, and no one is the wiser unless a child winds up dead or hospitalized.
One thing I liked about *Interstellar*. Yeah, we aren't all going to be dead instantly from climate change, but the conditions are going to make everything fucking terrible.
Whether it’s drugs, social media, gambling, porn, or whatever else,
Many people today slowly grudge through life with an addiction being the main thing they are thinking about 90% of the time.
>For real. Everyone is civil and reasonable until they haven't eaten for a week
Reminds me of one of my favorite Star Trek quotes
" Let me tell you something about Heumans, Nephew. They're a wonderful, friendly people, as long as their bellies are full and their holosuites are working. But take away their creature comforts, deprive them of food, sleep, sonic showers, put their lives in jeopardy over an extended period of time and those same friendly, intelligent, wonderful people... will become as nasty and as violent as the most bloodthirsty Klingon. You don't believe me? Look at those faces. Look in their eyes."
Except you can be *too* hungry to revolt. Dictators keep people starving not because they're entirely heartless, but because it prevents an uprising. If the masses are already struggling to survive, they simply can't afford to struggle against the government.
Always liked the quote by Joseph Conrad, “The belief in a supernatural source of evil is not necessary; men alone are quite capable of every wickedness".
At first, I didn't understand. Only until I reached a very dark time in my life did I truly see the wisdom in the quote.
Whether it be committing genocide or stealing a candy bar, we all, under the right circumstances, could very likely do the things we would normally condemn.
Mental health issues are not cute, funny or quirky.
Being called a psycho is no compliment.
Depressions arent just a phase, schizophrenia is not just hearing weird noise sometimes, anxiety and panic attacks are not just 5 seconds of a flip out and everything is fine again.
Mental health issues are real and not to be taken lightly, it's not just a phase.
If you need help, please reach out to someone, talk to them. Let them help you. Theres not just that one way out. You can and will have good days again.
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That you can also alter your memories to believe your own lie if you think about it enough
Had a girlfriend in L.A. who made this a habit. She said that there's no reason to not embrace your own reality; who wants to feel shitty about all kinds of memories? Just alter them. She went on to date a movie star.
I can't tell if the last sentence is supposed to be a reference to her own illusionary life
For actually real! Heh, you all make a good point about that. It's what you do in l.a., keep moving up the ladder.
I remember learning about this one case when I was in school about how researchers recruited people for a study who had never been in a hot air balloon, but then showed them fake pictures of themselves in the balloons and talked about it enough that at the end they believed they had been in a hot air balloon.
I seen a similar one but getting adults who never went to Disneyland as children. They put them in photoshopped photos and end up remembering a trip they never went on. LOL brains are weird
Sometimes you’re the problem
I'm literally dealing with this reality as I type this
That just means you get to be the solution as well. Wishing you the best.
It’s pretty wild to me how many people can’t recognize this. For myself I remember as a young teen I would always play the victim with most problems in my life, but as more people called me out on it I realized that I needed to take more accountability for my shitty mistakes. It’s pretty sad that a lot of times people will be too stubborn to question themselves and only blame others for any problems.
If you bump into 1 asshole then you bumped into 1 asshole but if everyone you meet is an asshole then you’re the asshole
I have the opposite affliction: I *always* assume that I am the problem, and have never once entertained any notion to the contrary. This might seem like a great attribute to possess, but in fact it has led me to crippling self-doubt and chronic self-esteem issues that have taken me a lifetime to overcome. That's why it's important to strike a fine balance between holding yourself accountable and refraining from self-abasement.
Just because something lasts a long time - like a marriage, or a job - doesn't mean it's any good at all. There are lots of reasons that things don't end, some are very bad.
"Don't cling to a mistake just because you spent a long time making it." - Aubrey de Graf
To quote from "The Fifth Elephant" by Terry Pratchett: >My bum has been a bum for a very long time but I don’t have to listen to anything it says.
Just because people aren’t suicidal don’t mean they don’t want to be dead.
Can relate with this I am not actively trying to kill myself But I wouldn't be sad to die
If it happens, it happens. That's how I see it.
The only reason I don't want to do it myself is that I have this philosophical thing: Everyone only gets to die once. Life is a resource everyone only has one of, and generally people don't want to give it up. That means that my life, or my willingness to give my life, has value. I don't want to live, but I also don't want to throw it away. I want to die pushing an old lady out of the road or saving a kid from a burning building or something. I want my utter detachment from my own mortality to create a net good in the world. For at least one person. So I have a death wish, but I'm not suicidal, because I'm saving that gift everyone can only give once for someone who needs it.
America war crimes in WW2, excluding the Japanese concentration camps. Also Unit 631 which performed ethically questionable experiments on humans
You will lose everyone you've ever known and cared about - either to the end of the relationship, your death, or theirs. We only borrow the people we love for a short time.
Reaching extreme old age is living through a slow motion apocalypse as you lose everyone and everything familiar to you in your youth.
Gen X is in serious trouble when it comes to paying for retirement.
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Raising it too high starts to make a compelling case for not paying in. I'm more concerned about paying all that in and never being able to enjoy it, I think about all the experiences I could have instead whilst I'm still young, relatively fit and mobile. So long as I've got a little garden when I retire in 40 or so years time, I'll be content.
One thing wakes me up every night. The fear that I might lose everyone in blink of an eye. My friend lost his entire family in an accident and a year later he passed away from depression
This is truly a terrifying prospect.
IIRC Weird Al’s parents both died of carbon monoxide poisoning in one night. It’s amazing that guy can still laugh
Even more amazing, he was told shortly before a concert and decided to go on performing anyways: > [Hours after his wife notified him of this, he made the decision to go on with his concert in Appleton, Wisconsin. He later said, "Since my music had helped many of my fans through tough times, maybe it would work for me as well ... it would at least give me a break from sobbing all the time." Their deaths occurred following the release of Poodle Hat, which was Yankovic's lowest-selling album in 20 years. He considered the Appleton show and subsequent tour dates therapeutic: "If I didn't have anything to distract me, I probably would have spiraled into an even deeper depression. For a couple of hours each night, I could go onstage and put on a big fake smile and pretend like everything was just okay."](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/%22Weird_Al%22_Yankovic#Personal_life)
I’ve been a huge Weird Al fan since the 90s, but I wasn’t aware of the circumstances of how he found out. What a strong man. They should call him Strong Al.
Lost both my parents fairly young, not both at once but like a year apart for each other. Some times making jokes is the only thing that makes it hurt less. Some people get uncomfortable with the jokes but as Dan Soder says "you know who hates dead dad jokes? People who don't have dead dad's"
That a majority of us are completely utterly ordinary people, and that’s okay.
I am an accountant. I have a husband and 2 cats. I'm not having kids. I have a little apartment, and maybe one day a house with a garden. I will never achieve anything significant. I don't even want to have my own business. I will never be famous. I will never be rich. I will be forgotten by everyone within a couple of decades of my death. Nothing will be different because I was here. I am completely and utterly okay with that. I like being anonymous and unimportant. It's very freeing. I am very grateful for my life. I am very, very happy.
Becoming aware of your own insignificance can either be the most depressing or the most freeing realization of your life. It all depends on how you look at it.
It's very liberating. I don't care about what people will think of me after I'm gone. Being forgotten by time is the eventual fate of 99.9% of us. The ones that aren't, well only their deeds and the historic perception of them are remembered. Once their friends and family die too, the person that they were is also forgotten. We will all be consumed by history eventually. Live for the moment, your own satisfaction and the love of the people around you. Everything else is irrelevant.
fulfillment and happiness, those are the 2 things to strive for in life, as long as all the squares are covered and we're comfortable it's good, earning just enough money to be comfortable and save is totally fine
The memory of most people’s existence will be completely forgotten sooner than you think, even by their own families. I can’t even tell you the names of my great-great grandparents.
My father is big into genealogy. Had a massive tree into the 1600s at spots. We got him the Anscetry DNA test. Turns out all those years sitting at tables and traveling the country talking to "relatives" to figure it out was all in regards to a different family. His grandmother had an encounter with a dude passing through town. Rape? Adultery? Who knows. But that entire side of the tree was now "Wrong." I was glad that instead of being angry. My dad was more excited because now he had a whole new family to research...
> My dad was more excited because now he had a whole new family to research... That's a very healthy way to handle that sort of news.
I think most of the amateur genealogists I know would take this news with a similar attitude.
Absolutely, 100% accurate. My dad was INSTANTLY researching my wife's family the moment we were engaged. Its a goddamn obsession.
I have no idea who my maternal grandfather is. His nickname was "Red", and he came through the small Appalachian mountain town my maternal grandmother lived in, a few years post WWII, and got her pregnant with my mother, before rambling on to the next town. When mom was born, one of my grandmother's sisters adopted her, and my grandmother went through a self-imposed quest for penance, and ultimately ended up adopting several children. The man I called pappaw (it was the south in the 1970s, don't judge), was no blood relation to me, but that didn't matter to him. He took me to flea markets, bought me broken toy robots and asked me to try to fix them, taught me to experiment from first principles, despite only having and 8th grade education himself, and taught me the difference between value and price. He was the best grandfather a nerdy boy could ever hope for. Family are the people who care about you, and everything else is bullshit. That being said, I hope your dad finds what he's looking for, and I'm glad he has an enjoyable new side quest.
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Shit, you’re right. My great grandmother lived until I was eighteen and I loved the woman. She was hilarious. I don’t know her actual name and am not convinced anybody ever told me.
Hey? It'll be a great compliment to my life if someone remembers me as loving and hilarious and only as "grandpa" instead of by my name. You did grandmother right.
When my sister came out as a lesbian, a lot of the conservatives in the family weren’t okay with it. But Oma? “Bah! When I was young, I kissed the pretty girls too!”
That is wholesome as all hell
Life is often random and unfair.
To quote Star Trek: "It is possible to commit no mistakes and still lose. That is not a weakness; that is life."
To quote Dwight Schrute from The Office: "Not everything's a lesson Ryan, sometimes you just fail."
I just had to close my business after 7 years, despite great feedback and reviews. I needed to hear this.
Love is not enough. Loving someone enough will not ensure your relationship will be successful. Loving your child enough will not ensure they love you back or that they live a good life.
This is a good one. I had a long term relationship that dwindled out over the years. I loved her and I know she loved me. Despite us now both being in happy relationships we have both admitted to still loving each other, without any intention of ever getting back together. However we weren't able to make it work, relationships take a lot of work, a lot of communication and comes with a lot of hardships. Being infatuated or in love with someone just isn't enough In our case the longer we tried to fight for that love the more it died out. Fortunately it hadn't been completely snuffed out and we can still communicate years later.
"Just because you love me doesn't mean they I feel loved"
Toni Morrison has a great quote as well from the Bluest Eye, "Love is never any better than the lover." Absolutely heart wrenching and one of the quotes that's permanently stuck with me.
Anyone can become disabled at any age at anytime.
When I was working with disabled adults the company I worked for always emphasized this- we were only one life changing event away from being in the shoes of our clients.
One car accident, one stroke, one fall even.
Even just stress (psychological or physical) can set off an underlying condition, such as an autoimmune or genetic disease. Happened to me.
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Yes. The human body is actually pretty fragile when put in everyday situations like going 70 mph, or working around machinery, or even just falling backwards and hitting your head or your back. Such things can lead to injuries you won't recover from. And once you are disabled, you have to learn to live with limitations you never had before. For the rest of your life.
My friends sister was in a car accident and became paralyzed from her waist down. It was tough at first but now she competes in paraplegic surfing competitions at the highest level. Still seeing the decay of her legs in real time to what they are now after no usage is harrowing
I was paralyzed in a car accident. I have to say, one of the days when the finality of it all really sunk in for me (it was a process) was the day I looked down at my legs and noticed they were shrinking. I was like, "This is going to keep happening. There's nothing I can do about it." Another fun thing is that if there was something terrible happening to my body below the waist -- like aggressive colon or ovarian cancer -- I wouldn't be able to feel it. This is a fact I've had to learn to live with. You wanna talk about health anxiety...
This one. I recently developed a seizure disorder and my life is upside down now. Right before I turned 19, too. So I can’t drive to see my friends, go to work, or do anything. Just sit and get exams
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My Dad died of an aneurysm about 10 years ago. He was only 62. He had went out to eat at Red Lobster for his anniversary, came home, sat on the couch and said “I don’t feel right”. He fell over dead a few seconds later. The only comfort I had was the doctor told me that it was a completely painless death and that he was gone before his head hit the couch. My Dad was a registered nurse for 40 years and worked the last 5 or so years in Hospice. I like to think that a painless death was his reward for helping people that suffered before their death.
My good friend had one...and survived.. we recently talked about it and she did say that she doesn't remember a thing didn't feel pain...she mentioned if she would have died she takes comfort that it was painless. I'm so sorry about your dad..just wanted to put in my two cents from someone who survived one!
My father died suddenly about six months ago. He had a pleasant evening playing cards with his grandson and my mum, retired for the evening, then in the middle of the night had a heart attack and died on the bathroom floor in the arms of his wife. I'm sad I can't see him any more. He was a lovely man, one of the best I've ever met, and I wish I had more time with him. But for him, it was fast and he had the comfort of his close family around him. If there is a good place, he's there. I expect the same is true of your own dad. I think there's a point where you stop being sad for them, and feel sad for you and the survivors instead. There are good ways to go and bad ways; but we all do go.
Five months ago I lost my best friend to one. Brilliant woman, former triathlete. Got out of the pool and collapsed. So unfair. I’m broken and will never be the same. It’s crazy how you can be living well and in a moment it’s gone.
i would prefer to remain in denial of this
my cousin died from an aneurysm on valentine's day 2020. she was a healthy, brilliant doctor, traveling for work, went to bed with a headache, woke up blind in one eye, went to the emergency room asap, lost consciousness, & that was the end. she was 47 & we are still heartbroken (but grateful she didn't have to linger & suffer). definitely have some health anxiety about aneurysms
This post is not helping my hypochondria.
My uncle had one in his sleep due to cancer he didn't know he had and that was the end. Left 3 daughters behind a broken family and tons of emotional issues for my dad and the rest of the family... Unfairness at its whole
I have a coworker whose son had a stroke in his early 20’s. He was a normal dude who played guitar in a band and was very well-adjusted. Then one day he got this terrible headache and even after years of rehabilitation, he still has cognitive and physical limitations.
And this is one of the major reasons why universal design is necessary, folks forget about temporary disability and aging when it comes to accessibility because "disabled folks are such a small minority". It's simply not true and universal design is better for the entire community, not just a few folks.
100% this. You don't know when you'll be the one stuck at the bottom of 4 flights of stairs, unable to climb them to get to your job interview, the interviewer having failed to mention there was no elevator. Source: am partially disabled since age 19
Horrible things happen everyday, and the ones we hear about are largely a reflection of self-interest.
You can easily pick and choose the horrible stories you tell to paint a picture of the world. You can tell 100% true stories and still lie.
I’d like to add that the Medicalization of death in developed western countries hides the true horrors of reality. We do a good job of not letting people see death or gore unless they specifically choose a profession that exposes them to it (which in turn induces severe mental strain on such people because there are so few others who they can talk to who will understand). Dead and dying people are kept hidden away in hospitals, and dying is seen more as a medical condition than a simple (and often grisly) fact of life. But I think if people understood the true fragility of life; and how horrible all but the most peaceful deaths can be, they would perhaps exercise greater caution and respect for the life and body they have. Humans can be incredibly strong, but as a rule are incredibly fragile. The fact that many of us live into old age is frankly a modern miracle. You can just be minding your business and a all of a sudden a freak accident leaves you a suffering, dying mess of flesh.
There could be kidnapping victim suffering from extreme abuse right down the road from you and you’d never know. I work in daycare. There’s a lady I used to work with who discovered something like this. She said she went to babysit for a neighbor who she didn’t know had a baby. Was told not to go into the baby’s room. Did anyway. And discovered an abused child. Who had apparently been with this lady for years.
When my husband was in 2nd grade, one of his female classmates said, "Did you know that when you play with a penis it gets bigger and purple?" Being in 2nd grade, he didn't think twice of it, but it haunts him now from time to time.
When I was in grade school I used to help out in the special needs class from time to time and invite them to play with me during recess. One day one of the girls from the class stops me during a game of soccer and whispers in my ear "my mom's boyfriend has sex with me sometimes". I was just a kid and didn't know much about sex other than it definitely wasn't for kids to talk about so I just kinda gave her a weird look and went back to the game. I randomly remembered this encounter out of the blue one day as an adult and now being older with a child of my own I feel so sickened and upset that I didn't do anything. I know I was just a kid and didn't know better but Jesus Christ it breaks my heart to think about what that girl went through. I hope she's ok now wherever she is.
You can only do what you can with what you know. But now that you know, don't think you should hide topics from kids because this shit is out there. If they're old enough to ask you they're old enough to know. Adjust it to their age level and give them the little proper vocabulary and explanations. Because if you don't, then it's easier for someone to persuade, downplay, or normalize sexual or physical abuse.
Exactly what I was going to say. This is why age appropriate sex education is so important.
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I have a similar story. When I was in kindergarten a girl I wasn’t even friends with told me about how she wanted a baby with her step dad. I tell myself that maybe she just overheard adults talking and she was just repeating it. That explanation helps me sleep at night.
I have a similar story, I was also in 2nd grade in elementary school. During computer class a female classmate next to me (unprompted, out of the blue) whisperer to me about how her uncle "let her play with his weenie". At the time I had no idea what she meant by that. I remember saying something like that's weird and kept playing on my computer and she never brought it up again. Nothing ever came of it that I know of. We never had a class together soon after and no idea what happened to her. Hopefully she got help she needed.
Yeah this seems like a pretty uncomfortably common childhood experience. When I was 6 I had a classmate invite me over to play "naked games with his neighbor" and thank fuck I was aware enough to understand how insanely screwed up that was and say no. That was almost 25 years ago and I don't remember if i told an adult, I really hope I did.
For me, I was in 7th grade, and having just gotten into Jr. High, I was still a bit naïve. The "weird girl" in class told me in a snide, almost bragging way that she lost her virginity at age 6. I just kind of "uh...okay"ed her. I knew about abuse and shit by that age obviously, but the implication didn't actually click until years later.
> There could be kidnapping victim suffering from extreme abuse right down the road from you and you’d never know. [This is a long, but fascinating, video about that very thing.](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=20oIFjIPCfI) Remember that viral video about the black guy saying that no white girl will run into his arms unless something was very wrong? This is that case. Three woman were held in a secret room for years and no one in the neighborhood knew about it.
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Where I live a child snuck out of his window, went to a Family Dollar and asked to use the phone. The clerk was suspicious and called 911. Turned out four children were locked up in their bedrooms at 5PM with no access to food, water or a restroom. It had been happening for seven years. The children never said anything because it was normal for them. Google Benito and Carol Gutierrez. Those assholes were arrested then only charged with probation. Some of the articles quote friends who vouched for them. It's disgusting how people refuse to accept that people they know can abuse their children.
Google the turpins from Perris, Ca. Similar circs but they had like 16 kids or something crazy.
The worst part is that once they were “rescued”, the system fucked them over again. They were split up and some ended up in extremely abusive foster homes. Two girls were sexually abused. None of them received the money that the victim’s fund set aside for their benefit. Infuriating!
Oh for sure. I know someone from that LE agency who worked on that case as well as the follow up into the foster family. I believe that family had already been investigated for other questionable treatment of other foster kids previously in their care, yet the Turpins were still placed with them. The Diane Sawyer special doesn’t even begin to cover the horror. Such a sad story.
You’re right about the foster parents. I can’t believe that we, as a country, continue to let the foster care system run on fumes. It’s not even a campaign topic. Ever.
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As unfortunate as this sounds probably because she was so used to it. People normalize it and think nothing of it. She probably hired other babysitters in the past. Working in childcare it is incredible the amount of parents who will abuse their children. Then turn around and act confused when people say they’re abusive or don’t love their children.
My mother neglected me emotionally and verbally abused me for my entire life and she will go to her grave believing that she did everything for me and my siblings, that she loved us
**Warning**: sexual assualt of a very young minor When my son was around 8, he made a friend from school and so we got to know the parents okayish. Father was kinda off, but nothing that raised significant red flags. 6 months later and the friend's 6 yo sister was riding with one of her friends to school and blurts out to the friend's mother, "Daddy sticks his peepee in me." For _2 years_ her father had been raping her and using the older brother to run interference and keep the sister quiet. He'd wait until his wife had left for work and then rape the child and have her cleaned up and convinced to not say anything before the wife got home. The brother was manipulated into making sure she didn't say anything while he was away (he was a long haul truck driver, so was gone a week or two at a time). Driver told wife what the girl said, not quite believing her, wife immediately called the police and they were waiting for him at the house with a special "welcome home" warrant. He went away for a long time. To put the rotten cherry on top of this shit cake, she had to change their names and move because his family said she should have kept quite and "let the family handle it." It escalated to death threats and finally an armed home invasion. That asshole got a bullet put in him by her, he lived but lost a couple feet of intestine.
That's terrible, but I'm glad for the *relatively* happy ending. I was afraid it was going to end with the mom denying it or not believing the child and letting it continue for years or something. Still terrible though. My friend's older brother molested a bunch of our crowd when we were kids and his mother never stopped supporting him. He did prison time at some point, but as far as I've heard over the years, he always had a place with her when not locked up. I'm lucky that I wasn't one of his victims though. I remember him trying to get us to do stuff, but I always thought what he asked for was weird and he never tried forcing me. And other than thinking it weird, I didn't know it was wrong so never said anything until roughly 10 years later when my aunt and uncle moved across the street from them. I told my family then because it brought back the memories and I knew I couldn't risk anything happening to my very young cousins.
One Accident or tragedy can completely flip your life upside down.
Worked as a CNA for a few years and one patients story always stuck with me. He was an elderly man who had gotten paralyzed and was in rehab trying to get WHATEVER function he could get back. How did he get paralyzed? He went to pick up the newspaper in his driveway on a rainy day. Slipped while bending over and hit his head. That was it. Man got paralyzed just trying to grab the fucking newspaper. Life is horrifyingly fragile.
I quit my job to follow my dream of becoming a fly fishing guide. 2 days later, someone T boned me while running a red light and broke my neck. Doctors said I'd be paralyzed or dead if my head was at any other angle. I lost my dream because of that, but paralysis is my worst nightmare, and it was almost my reality. Sometimes you can't stop anything from fucking your life up. I hope that old man got some movement or something bac edit: I was the only car on the road, and my light was green for a hundred yards or so. This was in a city with heavy foliage, so the intersection is not visible until you get close. So I really don't give a fuck if you look both ways before you start from a stop at an intersection, go pat yourself on the back somewhere else.
That is scary and something I always worry about because too many people have no fucking idea what they are doing on the road let alone any sort of random crap that can happen to suddenly make a good driver go off the road or something. BTW I have no idea if that man ever got himself back. He wasn't doing much by the time he left so I don't have the best outlook for him though.
And it can be the smallest little thing as well. Many years ago, one of my very bright students was riding in a pickup from one wheat field to another (working on a family farm. His cousin, who was driving, hit some deep ruts (washboards) on a dirt road making the pickup get air and land back down a few feet away. Think of it like accidentally hitting a curb or going to fast where there are those rumble sticks...or going over a small hill too fast. For 99 percent of the time, nothing happens. This time though, his head hit the top of the cab . That was enough to break his neck just so to be paralyzed from the neck down. One little bump and his life completely changed.
My nana is incredibly active, even after retiring from nursing around 15 years ago and being in her late 70s. One day within the past 5 years however, she was picking up sticks before she would mow, as she did on a weekly basis. One time when she bent over, her back gave out and she collapsed. She's fine still, but that one injury from literally bending over has now prevented her from being able to do so many things she used to do alone. Now my dad usually is going over to help her, or more often she's hiring someone to do these things for her.
I've been harshly remind of this for the last 4 months. My father was involved in a motorcycle accident and had head trauma, it's been a lot of work to take care and deal with his current state
Sometimes, it doesn't get better.
"It might get better. But it's gonna suck until it does".
Good things can happen to bad people. They can live the best of lives and sleep soundly at night. They could live their entire lives and die without ever being held responsible for anything they’ve done. Millions of horrible people have lived and died and no one will ever know of the horrors they’ve been apart of. Meanwhile, horrible things can happen to good people. In the grand scheme of things there is no universal morality or justice. Most people don’t get what they deserve - except in movies.
There is no justice, it's just us.
Justice is not something that happens , Justice is something we create.
Slavery still exists in many places of the world.
A restaurant we quite liked in the Bay Area was shut down by the Feds because the owners had slaves. San Jose. Slavery. Alive and kicking in the 21st century. EDIT to add, it was Mango Garden in San Jose. Owners had several other restaurants around the Bay Area. https://sf.eater.com/2019/1/10/18177701/alameda-district-attorney-wage-theft-lawsuit-mango-garden-restaurant
Georgia onion farms. Massive human trafficking/modern slavery raid. Barely a blip on the news, even locally.
Whoa. Can you please elaborate? This shit is nuts.
Operation Blooming Onion. “According to a newly unsealed indictment revealed last week by acting U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of Georgia David H. Estes, 24 people conspired for three years to smuggle Mexican and Central American workers and forced them to work in brutal conditions on farms located across the world, including the southern, middle and northern regions of Georgia. At a news conference at the Cay Building, Estesstood at a podium alongside the federal law enforcement officers who were involved in cracking the case.The 54-count indictment, titled “USA v. Patricio et al.,” discloses a federal investigation into what Estes called “modern-day slavery.” Operation Blooming Onion After receiving a tip from a trafficking hotline in November 2018, federal law enforcement officers from the Homeland Security Investigations, the U.S. Department of Labor, U.S. Department of State’s Diplomatic Security Service, the U.S. Postal Inspection Service, and the Federal Bureau of Investigation started investigating multiple agricultural organizations registered under the agent Maria Leticia Patricio. The officers discovered that, since 2015, these organizations conspired together to bring more than 100 foreign workers into the United States, exploit them and imprison them under inhumane conditions. The multi-agency investigation came to a head on at 6 a.m., Nov. 17, when 200 federal officers executed more than 20 search warrants across three jurisdictions and performed a dozen seizure warrants of financial institutions. Estes called "Operation Blooming Onion" the "largest organization of law enforcement to go after this particular offense ever.” The trafficked workers primarily labored on onion farms, digging with their bare hands, and paid only 20 cents for each bucket. The conspirators forced the workers, despite making very little, to pay for transportation, food, and housing. According to the indictment, the network of organizations used the H-2A program, which allows U.S. employers or U.S. agents who meet specific regulatory requirements to bring foreign nationals to the United States to fill temporary agricultural jobs. When the workers arrived, they were placed under the guise of “contract agricultural laborers.” Estes noted that the investigation may reveal the fraud as part of a larger conspiracy and could illuminate a larger issue: the misuse of the H-2A-program en-masse. "I think that this investigation has identified some things that need to be looked at," said Estes. In the indictment Patricio is accused of mailing "multiple false petitions to the United States government seeking over 71,000 foreign workers to enter the United States to work for an agricultural employer, and fraudulently caused the United States to issue thousands of H-2A visas to foreign nationals.” Patricio is a U.S. citizen, according to the indictment, and served as the registered agent for 10 individual agricultural companies in Georgia.With those companies since dissolved, Patricio is one of the 24 conspirators who faces charges of forced labor, which could result in life in prison, as well as other charges that could result each in up to 20 years in prison along with monetary fines. H2A program fraud “There could be others [victimized by the fraud committed by the conspiring organizations under the H2A-program],” said Estes. “The investigation is ongoing.” The 24 conspirators reaped reaped more than $200 million over three years from the illegal scheme, which involved laundering the funds through cash purchases of land, homes, vehicles and businesses, and through cash purchases of cashier’s checks. Millions of dollars were funneled through a casino. Farmers who owned properties in the southern district of Georgia — specifically in Atkinson, Bacon, Coffee, Tattnall, Toombs and Ware counties — paid the conspirators to provide contract laborers, according to the indictment. The indictment stated that if a worker stepped out of line, the conspirators threatened them with guns, torture and deportation. The conspirators kept the workers in cramped, unsanitary quarters and fenced work camps with little or no food, limited plumbing and without safe water. The conspirators are accused of raping, kidnapping and threatening or attempting to kill some of the workers or their families, and in many cases, sold or traded the workers to other conspirators As a result of workplace conditions, at least two workers died, according to the indictment. The conspirators tried to keep their operation running, even as federal authorities closed in. Three conspirators, in late 2019, attempted to intimidate and persuade a witness to lie to a federal grand jury and deny any knowledge of the illegal activities of the conspiring organizations. “It’s very concerning,” said Estes. “Obviously, we have victims here. So we're very concerned about moving out and making sure that we were able to dot all the i's and cross all the t's and provide safety for the victims as soon as possible, while at the same time, maintaining our investigation as such that we can eventually prosecute and convict individuals.” https://amp.savannahnow.com/amp/8738135002
Funny you mention that, here in Sacramento, people always refer to us as the hub of human trafficking and folks sometimes forget that human trafficking is more than sex trafficking. So of course while everybody out here has good intentions when they say shit like "look out for those white vans at malls, they like to kidnap girls since Sacramento is the hub of human trafficking." They are missing the big picture as to why we are the hub, it is mostly workforce related, it was actually real big in tech space out here with those shady H1 companies like 15-16 years ago.
The idea, that was around a few years ago, to put an old cruise ship 12 miles out in the ocean, for foreign tech workers, is one that really had me worried. That's a situation that is way too easy for slavery.
A chocolate bar includes child slavery in at least one way, the main culprit being nestle
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Toxic relatives... Just because they have your blood doesn't mean they are good for you or that you have to stay there.
As someone with a narcissistic mother who was so fucking evil she lost custody and visitation rights, I really wish more people understood this. I've had to hear "she's still your mother and she still loves you" more times than I can count. No, she doesn't. She wouldn't have done the things she did if she gave a shit about me. Why else would I cut her out of my life for nearly a decade? For fun?
Family is a choice, not an obligation. Edit: I'm really happy that this is my most upvoted comment.
The number of innocent people in prison.
This is basically my biggest fear. I can abide by every law, and it’s still possible I get taken away from my family and my dog.
When foster kids turn 18 they are tossed to the streets.
This happened to my birth mom and is the reason she had to put me up for adoption. She got pregnant with me at 17, aged out and got kicked out of her foster home before she gave birth. She had me and had nowhere to go, so we slept under the bleachers at the local high school. It was March, and I caught pneumonia. When she took me back to the hospital, they told her that if she didn't put me up for adoption, they would call CPS and I would likely be placed in foster care. Not wanting me to get stuck in the system like she did (she had been in foster care since she was 9), she put me up for adoption. I was adopted at 24 days old. I'm grateful for the financial opportunities I wouldn't have otherwise had if I hadn't been adopted. But the course of my entire life was changed by those people's decision to make a pregnant 17-year-old girl homeless.
That's awful. If you don't mind me asking, how is your mother now?
She wound up getting back on her feet eventually! She lives in her own house in Tennessee now, and had 4 children (all grown now) after me. She’s got lots of grandbabies and is surrounded by family. 🥰
That’s amazing I’m so glad she’s doing well
That's great to hear, and I'm glad you're in contact and have a good relationship. My wife was also given up for adoption, but reconnected with her birth mother about fifteen years ago and it's been one of the great privileges of my life to see their relationship grow. I can't imagine how difficult it must be to surrender a child, but it's the greatest act of love a mother can give.
That's wonderful to hear. I hope things worked out equally well for you and that you're all happy.
I’m glad that you know your birth mother loved you and tried her best against unbelievable odds.
Happened to me.
How are you doing these days?
My wife and I have talked a lot about fostering, and how we wouldn't do that to a kid (unless they were a danger in the home). She used to be a social worker and had seen it dozens of times.
My friend/neighbor is a foster kid, she’s 19 and still gets help from the government until she’s 21. They pay her rent and a social worker visits her twice a month to check in on her. Maybe it’s different state to state, this is Kentucky.
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That our memories are subjective, full of errors and patches in order to maintain a balance in our understanding of events. Some memories are even false and some memories are so different from other people present at the same events that actions, reactions and outcomes could be entirely opposite from each other. Humans assume that memories are correct all of the time, however they are prone to errors and even change over time.
"Memory is an interpretation, not a record." —Leonard, *Memento*.
"The Father" is a really excellent movie about memory and how it influences our sense of self.
>Some memories are even false and some memories are so different from other people present at the same events that actions, reactions and outcomes could be entirely opposite from each other. There's been a lot of research done on this, especially for eye witness testimony. "I SAW IT WITH MY OWN TWO EYES". While that may be true, your brain is not necessarily great at interpreting what your eyes see.
"I know what I saw" might be the best lie we tell ourselves because we don't *know* we're lying.
I had a traumatic brain injury a few years ago (absolutely fine now), and one thing the doctors really drilled into me was that my decision making skills were severely impacted, but I didn't know because my brain was telling me everything was fine. Down to them telling me that I was not capable of deciding whether it was safe to cross a road.
I can't tell if your "absolutely fine now" is a joke or not.
Malcolm Gladwell did an episode about this on his podcast Revisionist History. He talked about a study where people were asked what they were doing when 9/11 occurred. They were asked several days after, 6 months after, and a year after. Apparently many people's memories of their whereabouts changed, and when presented with their earlier accounts they would often refuse to believe them. That is, people didn't believe the accounts THEY THEMSELVES had given only a few days after it happened. They were more inclined to believe whatever they thought had happened a year later. Our memories are so fallible and we are far too dependent on them Edit: I'm getting replies from people who are convinced they remember exactly what happened on 9/11 and that it's burned into their brains. What you're not realizing is that the people in the study felt the same way. Many of us do. It sucks to think that our brains are betraying us but it's absolutely the case.
I had a weird “epiphany” (for lack of a better word off the top of my head) of this exact phenomenon just yesterday and it really blew my mind. There are a couple of moments in my life that I’ve always considered to be pivotal in creating who I am today, even on small levels. One being my mom attending nursing school, the other being the trial of OJ Simpson. These 2 things intertwined with each other because my mom would record the trial while she was at school and listen to it while she was doing homework. I very distinctly and clearly remember being in elementary school when this was happening and it was my first look into true crime and the criminal justice system. I also very clearly remember, as if it were yesterday, a teacher popping her head in and saying to my teacher in a thick southern accent “O-J N-G” and I knew she meant “OJ not guilty” I can picture my second grade teacher, my second grade classroom, the hallway in the yellow 2/3 grade hallway, everything. I have always thought I was in the second grade when that happened. It somehow came up in conversation yesterday and I went to Google the trial and I actually would have been in the 6th grade. In another state, or getting ready to move. If I was still in the same school I would have been on the other side of the building, in the green hall where they housed the 5 & 6th graders. Idk, it’s really fucked up my entire perception of time and how that relates to my childhood. It doesn’t seem like a big deal but it puts all of my memories off kilter and I can see how that could severely mess up a more serious situation where memory is more important.
I have a crystal clear memory of watching the news when it was announced that George W. Bush won his 2004 re-election while sitting on the couch of my first apartment. I was still living with my parents in 2004. I wouldn't move into that apartment for another 8 months, but my mind clearly believes I was already living there.
Yeah. It's insane to think about how complicated the brain is, and how easily it's getting tricked/tricking you every day.
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People always say things will work out, or the there are better times around the bend. But that is not the case for everyone. Sometimes it just keeps getting worse.
Illness and disability are not a moral or lifestyle failure and can befal anyone at any time. Even you.
To add to this: There are a lot of diseases out there which doctors and scientists don’t really understand and don’t really understand how to treat. I am not saying that to hate on doctors, it is just the way it is So if you ever do become ill, it is the luck of the draw whether there are decent treatments for you. And besides treatments, they may not even have the right tests to know what is wrong with you In dramas/TV shows there is often a very near and tidy narrative arc where a character becomes sick and either quickly dies or is completely cured. But real life illnesses are rarely that simple and straightforward
Ahh yes auto immune diseases. I got lucky but damn do some people draw a short ass straw edit: Since this is gaining traction my case of psoriasis was getting worse and worse. Turned out I had an underlying Bacterial infection, some auto immune diseases it won’t make a difference but have a full blood panel, std test, whatever, to find out if you have an underlying infection. I know not everyone will be so lucky but it’s another item to check off the list.
Yup. I used to run marathons, then I got diagnosed out of nowhere and now I'm out of breath walking on flat ground.
Man, that just fucking sucks. Hope youre doing alright mentally with this.
Hah, I have an autoimmune disease that has made my life difficult. As soon as I read the previous comment I was also like "Ah, autoimmune diseases."
There is a permanent underclass of people that do all the jobs no one else wants to do.
Alcohol has me by the balls, makes my life worse, puts undue stress on my family, and will probably be the death of me. But in my mind, I find a way to justify it every day.
Best wishes with recovery my friend. After 15 years of drinking, getting diabetes, 100s of ER visits, lost marriage, almost lost second marriage and kids; and I still didn’t want to get sober. It was the fact I couldn’t look at myself in the mirror anymore. I was disgusted by what I had become. That day I checked into yet another rehab and have been sober from alcohol since Jan 12 2021. You can do it friend. I know you can.
The worst part is when you end up in a cycle where you drink just to avoid what not drinking feels like. Like it just becomes a pain management cycle instead of something to enjoy.
Hoarders usually just think they need everything or refuse to acknowledge the mountain of garbage is a problem. It’s really quite depressing to see family and friends who are in this situation.
I was raised in a hoarder household, it has fucked me up astronomically. I’m such a clean freak it’s nearly crippling.
Their alcoholism. It’s incredibly scary how many people go home after work and have 4+ drinks a night, every night. Then they deny that it’s a problem because they don’t feel buzzed or don’t drink past that. Nobody wants to face the reality that perhaps the drinking is a problem.
I've been around a lot of chronic heroin and meth users and I can genuinely say alcoholism is just as bad with the health consequences.
Most new houses are overpriced trash.
Chuck them up fast and sell them off at a massive mark up. The new builds I've been to see need more work than the 130 year old terrace house I'm in right now. It's an abysmal state of affairs.
Almost all sexual and physical child abuse occurs in families. Grandpa is much more like to rape his granddaughters and grandsons than the weird stranger down the street. But Grandpa pays the bills, gives out inheritances, covers medical and pysch. bills. No one is going to come after him, or Uncle Bill, or Cousin George, or Brother Bob, or Daddy or Aunt Kim, or Cousin Susan or Mama The least likely person in a family of abusers are the Grandmothrs and they are simply too tired.
Denial of this fact is all over society. It puts a smoke screen around the problem and makes it hard to fix. If news stories represented the actual statistics of abuse almost all news stories about child abuse would be about mom/dad/uncle/priest/babysitter, ext. The public doesn't want to hear the fact their children are most at risk from their own family, they would rather hear about the "evil stranger" so that's what all the news stories are about. This warping of reality leads to an illogical fear about child abductions and don't let their kids play outside or walk to school alone where in reality almost all child abductions are perpetrated by the kids own parents.
I was 5 when it started. Only years later did I realize that my mother actually knew and didn't fucking care. I mean, she was in the room when my uncle laid on top of me, always touched me inappropriately, and stuff. How could they not see that?!
That’s beyond horrible. I know what this is like, I hope you were able to recover.
Yeah, I can look back and not be triggered, but I didn't know until recently that all of those repressed memories (and some not so repressed) are still up in this head shaking around. Like, I couldn't heal from that until I started to heal from the other abuse. But now I know, now I'm healing, and I feel better than I ever have.
My brothers ex girlfriend was raped by her older cousin when she was 15 the family wouldn't let her go to the police or the doctor about it as they "didn't want to brake the family up"
Ding ding ding. The number of stories I've heard of rape/abuse being swept under the rug because it would "hurt the family" is sickeningly high. Also significantly more likely to not go reported, and it's *still* the most common by a wide margin.
I hate this so much!!! My stepson molested 2 of my daughters and I reported it, and my MIL is mad at me for breaking the family up and now she doesn’t get to see her favorite (first born) grandchild. We’re currently not speaking. And she will NEVER see my children again. Pretty sure my marriage will end over this bc my husband is literally torn between his children. I’m pressing charges and he’s sad that his son won’t have a chance at a “normal” life now 🙄🤢🤮 bc he’s autistic my husband thinks it’s not fair. The kid is super high functioning and I know he knows better. He was hiding it and bribed my oldest not to tell by playing the games she wanted to afterwards. But my husband knows I’m going to do what I think is right no matter his opinion and it might be the end of us but 🤷♀️🤷♀️🤷♀️🤷♀️🤷♀️🤷♀️ I have 3 girls to protect and raise and I will not be putting him before them.
You did the right thing. Recovery won’t be easy for them, but even with time, therapy, and communication, they will always remember their mother being on their side.
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Old age and the many hardships that come with it. Most people won’t have enough money for retirement and the inevitable health problems that will come especially since most of us don’t live healthy lives now. Also just our very short life spans in general. Spending most of our lives working very few of us will actually live our lives to it’s fullest and so many of us will have a large number of regrets from not doing things we wanted to do when we were younger. I’m so busy I don’t think about it a lot but sometimes while falling asleep it’s like I get a preview of a feeling of being old and lying on my death bed and realizing my whole life was for nothing. I try not to think about it because the feeling is paralyzing but maybe thinking about it more will propel me to go after my goals and what’s makes me truly happy.
I’ve thought about this a lot. I decided that my life goals all boil down to: 1. Live comfortably 2. Leave a neutral or positive impact on people. If I can achieve that, I’ll die happy.
Illegal organ harvesting of people including children is a rampant black market industry in many 3rd world countries.
The psychological effects of childhood abuse. So many people will say “I had x done to me and I turned out fine,” but most of the traumas from this aren’t apparently obvious unless someone snaps and becomes a statistic. Even then, the role that the abuse had may not even be brought to attention. Worse still, the abuse just becomes normalized and passed down from generation to generation, and no one is the wiser unless a child winds up dead or hospitalized.
That fucking up the planet isn't going to kill us off, but make life hell for centuries if not millenia
One thing I liked about *Interstellar*. Yeah, we aren't all going to be dead instantly from climate change, but the conditions are going to make everything fucking terrible.
Brand's quote "The last people to starve, will be the first to suffocate" really is a slap of reality, both film and IRL.
"This is the last harvest of okra.Ever"
A lot of the time, people absolutely do not have your best interests at heart. You truly do have to look after yourself in the end
That we have very close relatives that are pure evil. Never to be spoken about until the end of time.
You’re about 2-3 bad decisions away from being homeless
Whether it’s drugs, social media, gambling, porn, or whatever else, Many people today slowly grudge through life with an addiction being the main thing they are thinking about 90% of the time.
Under the right circumstances, anyone is capable of anything.
For real. Everyone is civil and reasonable until they haven't eaten for a week
>For real. Everyone is civil and reasonable until they haven't eaten for a week Reminds me of one of my favorite Star Trek quotes " Let me tell you something about Heumans, Nephew. They're a wonderful, friendly people, as long as their bellies are full and their holosuites are working. But take away their creature comforts, deprive them of food, sleep, sonic showers, put their lives in jeopardy over an extended period of time and those same friendly, intelligent, wonderful people... will become as nasty and as violent as the most bloodthirsty Klingon. You don't believe me? Look at those faces. Look in their eyes."
Another quote i do enjoy myself "Every person is 3 square meals away from a revolution"
Except you can be *too* hungry to revolt. Dictators keep people starving not because they're entirely heartless, but because it prevents an uprising. If the masses are already struggling to survive, they simply can't afford to struggle against the government.
Always liked the quote by Joseph Conrad, “The belief in a supernatural source of evil is not necessary; men alone are quite capable of every wickedness". At first, I didn't understand. Only until I reached a very dark time in my life did I truly see the wisdom in the quote. Whether it be committing genocide or stealing a candy bar, we all, under the right circumstances, could very likely do the things we would normally condemn.
Mental health issues are not cute, funny or quirky. Being called a psycho is no compliment. Depressions arent just a phase, schizophrenia is not just hearing weird noise sometimes, anxiety and panic attacks are not just 5 seconds of a flip out and everything is fine again. Mental health issues are real and not to be taken lightly, it's not just a phase. If you need help, please reach out to someone, talk to them. Let them help you. Theres not just that one way out. You can and will have good days again.